HTC U11+ press renders leak and it looks enticing

I have been one of many detractors from HTC’s inability to move with the times and update their phone design but HTC are set to have me eat my words. Today they are set to announce their new flagship, the HTC U11+ and from the press renders that have leaked early it looks amazing.

Evan Blass, once again, has today tweeted out a press render of the upcoming HTC U11+ in what they are calling a “Translucent Black”.

Obviously translucent in the name of the colour means that you can see through the back cover, which in itself gives away what appears to be induction coils — for wireless charging. Also on the rear is the fingerprint scanner and, surprisingly, a single camera lens. Google though have shown what can be accomplished with a single lens so it may be possible that HTC are borrowing some technology from them — after all HTC did include the next split-pixel camera in the Pixel 2 they built for Google.

The front shows the now seemingly standard minimal bezels and 18:9 aspect ratio display. The OS skin appears to be Sense UI which is very minimal these days. All together it looks to be a very stylish and attractive phone. We will find out more later today/early tomorrow hopefully including hopefully Australian release details.

Am I the only one wondering why this phone wasn’t the Pixel 2 XL? It’s only a few weeks after the Pixel 2 release and many of the issues plaguing the Pixel 2 XL may well have been avoided using this as the base.

Scott Plowman Associate Editor

Scott is our modding guru - he has his finger on the pulse of all things ‘moddable’, pointing us towards all the cutting edge mods hacks that are available. When he’s not gymming it up, or scanning the heck out of Nexus devices, you'll find him on the Ausdroid Podcast.

Outside of Ausdroid, Scott's a health care professional and lecturer at a well known Victorian university.

Except the HTC uses a Samsung OLED, and part of Google’s decision to use an LG panel in the XL was to back another horse in the OLED race rather than just Samsung. The fear most players in the smartphone space have is that Samsung increasingly holds all the chips in display tech. Short term that might make the display a weakness, but long term LG will get better at OLED and there will be some much-needed competition in display manufacture.